


holds my hope

by nxttime



Series: Whumptober 2019 [2]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Nightwing (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics), Red Robin (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Dick is tired, Gen, Jason doesn't like sleeping where he doesn't feel safe, Jason is tired, Officer Grayson for the first parts of this fic, Tim is Sleeping, Whump, Whumptober 2019, blergh ambiguous endings, he's also very protective, idk i didn't go too hard on this one, then we go to Stressed and Tired Red Hood Jason, uh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-08
Updated: 2019-10-08
Packaged: 2020-11-27 08:34:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20945411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nxttime/pseuds/nxttime
Summary: Part two!Jason is very tired and stressed but he refuses to let himself sleep, Dick is also very tired and stressed but he does catch a z or two, Tim is asleep the entire time, Dick has a good partner, and everyone is everywhere and nobody knows what is going on at all because neither do I :D





	holds my hope

**Author's Note:**

> /pops confetti/ i'm a day laaate~

Dick is driving a working young adult to his parent’s house when Babs calls him.

He’s in Blüdhaven, on-shift with his new partner, Rookie Daniels Ryne, and just finished dealing with the assault case. Ryne was in the backseats and the teen—Corey, he’d said his name was—is in the passenger’s side of the squad car. Dick is making small talk, debating superior fashion choices.

Ryne is in the middle of his long spiel about how _Comfort is the way to go, no matter how ugly it looks, _and Dick is thriving off the vein he can see in Corey’s forehead.

“Hell yeah, Rookie,” Dick laughs. “That’s what I’m talking about.”

When his phone rings, Dick makes a face and pulls over, parking before he slips his phone out of his pocket and checks the caller ID.

“Ryne,” he says, interrupting the rookie’s conversation with Corey.

“Grayson.”

Dick’s already tapping to accept the call as he unbuckles himself and steps out of the squad car. “Can you drive? I need to take this.”

Barbara doesn’t call him often. Whenever she does it’s because it’s either his birthday, a holiday, there’s an issue with a case, or someone’s dead. Sometimes she’ll call him for a mundane chat, but those calls are few and far between.

So he thinks he’s validated in feeling worried that she’s calling him in the middle of October, at ten forty-three p.m., on a Monday.

They’re already stepping around each other when the rookie gives him an affirmative and Dick settles into the backseats.

When the call picks up, Babs simply says, _“Dick.”_

Dick smiles a little, because it’s hard _not _to smile when he talks to his friends, and doesn’t need to fake the contented tone of his voice when he speaks.

“Hey, Babs.”

_“How are you?”_

The question scratches off the _a holiday Dick forgot, there’s an issue with a case, _and _someone’s dead _options from the list, and the possibility of _it’s his birthday _wasn’t even a mild occurrence to him.

In other words: He has no idea what she’s calling about.

Brow crinkling with his slight puzzlement, he answers, “Doing okay.” Flicking his gaze away from the window over to the front seats—where Corey and Ryne are now debating _Be gay, do crime _if you’re a cop—Dick adds, “I’m on-duty, though, Babs. Sorry to cut this short, but, was there anything you needed?”

_“Red Robin’s been admitted to Gotham General.”_

Dick feels his brain screech to a halt.

The hospital. Tim’s in the hospital.

But that’s not what Babs said—she’d said _Red Robin _had been admitted to Gotham General, which just heightens the severity of the situation, because the only protocol that includes _general hospitals _in it is the one that _also _includes severe life-threatening injuries that are untreatable in the Batcave, whether it is because there simply isn’t time enough to reach the ‘Cave, because it’s _that bad, _or both.

Life-threatening injuries. Tim’s suffering from life-threatening injuries.

“Grayson? You alright?”

Dick blinks and realizes Corey’s been dropped off. He looks out the window and catches the kid’s wave before the door closes, and that means Ryne had finished the thirty-minute drive, gotten out of the car to explain the situation to Corey’s parents, and returned to the car in the time that Dick had been on the phone.

“Yeah,” he says, shaking his head and flashing his partner a flimsy smile. “Yeah, no, I’m—Babs? You still there?—I’m okay.”

_“Still here,” _Barbara confirms._ “You took ten minutes to snap out of it.”_

“I—sorry.” Dick closes his eyes, takes a deep breath.

“I’m driving us back to the station,” Ryne tells him, turning in his seat to look through the divider that separates the front seats from the backseats. His dark brown eyes search Dick’s deep blue ones when their gazes meet, and he checks, “You sure you’re okay?”

Dick flashes another smile, this one even weaker.

“No,” he says.

Ryne nods once, turns around, shifts the car out of park, and pulls away from Corey’s house with a simple, “Okay.”

_“I need you to get to Gotham General as soon as you can.”_

Worrying his bottom lip between his teeth as he looks back out the window, Dick says, “I’ll be there. Is anybody with him?”

_“Yes.”_

Relief floods through him at the singular word, and Dick lets out a long exhale.

“Good. Awesome. Okay.” He takes a minute to let himself _breathe, _then asks, “Who?”

_“Red Hood.”_

Jason.

Dick feels himself relax further because, if _he _can’t be there, Jason is the next best person. Jason’s protective on a good day, and extremely protective on a bad day. In the case of a little brother being _injured, _he’s worse than Bruce. Jason will keep Tim safe.

“Okay,” Dick says. “Why’re you sending me then? Jason’s got it. I’m still going to visit—probably won’t leave until he’s released from the hospital—but why the urgency?”

_“Hurry up.”_

She hung up before Dick could say another word, and he frowned at his phone for a minute before turning it off and putting it away again with a sigh.

He notices Ryne glance over at him from the corner of his eye, but neither of them say anything the rest of the ride.

Dick bids his partner good-bye as he clocks out, collects his jacket, and heads to his car.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Rookie,” he calls. “You’re buying!”

“I never agreed to that!” Ryne responds, flustered.

Dick just laughs as the door closes behind him.

Walking to his car, the smile slips off his face pretty quickly, and he spends a few minutes sitting at the wheel with his face in his hands, just focusing on breathing.

Tim’s going to be fine.

* * *

About forty-five minutes later Dick’s standing in the waiting room of Gotham General’s ICU, full Nightwing ensemble, Jason nowhere to be found, and waiting for the nurse to show up and update him on how his little brother’s doing.

He’s pacing, feeling a thousand percent ridiculous standing in the middle of the ICU as _Nightwing, _and nerves racketing up the longer he doesn’t see Jason _or _Tim, and is just about ready to lose his mind when a slight nurse walks through the double-doors and says, “Nightwing?”

Dick’s head snaps over at his name and he’s standing with the nurse in seconds, skin crawling with worry.

“How is he?” Dick blurts, anxiety too much to contain.

Thankfully the nurse just smiles a little and says, “Red Hood and Red Robin arrived here about an hour before you did. The surgery is still in progress—” Dick’s breathing hitches unnoticeably “—but the odds do look good for Red Robin. He’s strong.”

“Oh, God,” he exhales, dragging his hands down his face. “Thank you.”

“Of course,” the nurse says, resting a comforting hand on Dick’s bicep to pat it twice. “Red Hood refuses to leave the operating room and is sitting in a corner, watching the entire process.”

Dick nods, rubbing his face before dropping his hands and smiling as much as he can manage.

“Yeah,” he says. “Sounds like something he’d do. He’s just worried, you know?”

The nurse nods and they exchange a few more words before Dick’s left alone in the waiting room again.

He plops himself in a seat, crosses his arms and his legs at the ankles, and settles in to wait.

* * *

Jason is _so _fucking exhausted. He just wants to go home and fall asleep, wants to pass out for the rest of the year he’s so tired.

But he sits in the corner of Tim’s room, arms crossed, and stays awake. There’s a cup of coffee on the small table to his right someone brought him, but Jason hasn’t moved an inch since they’d moved Tim to the room they’re in.

Dick walked in about five minutes after they’d finally gotten everything settled, and he’d immediately dragged a chair up next to Tim’s bedside. Now he sits holding Tim’s hand in one of his, leaning on the bed, breathing like he’s fallen asleep.

Jason refuses to let himself sleep. No matter how bone-weary, how drained, how absolutely _exhausted _he is, he refuses to let himself sleep.

If he sleeps, he’s afraid.

Of himself, of the staff, of the vents, of _Gotham. _He doesn’t trust this makeshift safety.

So he sits there, arms crossed, in the corner of the room, eyes locked on the door, mind blank.

There’s silence between the regular _beep, beep, beep_’s from Tim’s vital monitors. Dick mutters something and his hand tightens around Tim’s.

Tim take a soft, wheezing breath. The surgeons had discovered some inflammation in Tim’s throat. Tim has a cannula in.

Jason doesn’t make a sound.

It’s quiet.

Damn he doesn’t want to sleep, but Jason can’t help the too-long blinks he keeps taking. Every time he snaps back with a small jolt, breath speeding up a little. The night before he hadn’t gotten any sleep, too busy taking care of three other cases he was working, and the night before that he’d only gotten about four hours of sleep.

He’s so tired.

Jason grabs the cup of coffee and drinks a fourth of it before setting it back down, stands to stretch his muscles, walks to the door, opens it, looks down the hall both ways, then closes the door again and heads back to his seat.

As he’s passing Tim’s bed, Jason ducks and drives his elbow back.

The assassin jumps back and spins the syringe they’d been holding as they shift their stance.

Jason’s way to physically and mentally drained and tired to deal with this.

“Nightwing!” he barks hoarsely, side-stepping another attack sent his way and countering with his own.

“Dealt with before you,” the assassin informs blandly, striking twice more.

Jason clenches his jaw.

The fight doesn’t last long. Jason’s tired. His attacks aren’t as strong as they would normally be, they’re not as quick or precise, not as confident.

And the needle he gets to the neck is the price he pays. It has him crumbling to the floor in seconds, his head smacking _hard _against the floor.

There’s a short huff and through closing eyes Jason watches the assassin’s feet shift.

He forces an arm under his torso, doing his best to fight the heavy drowsiness and ignore the throbbing ache in his head, and grabs the assassin’s ankle as tight as he can.

“Get _back,” _he tries to say, but all that comes out is a cracked whisper.

“You’re mistaken, Todd,” the assassin says, shaking their ankle out of Jason’s grip and stepping on him a little to have his arm giving out beneath him. “I’m not here for Drake.”

He’s already passing out when he finishes asking, “Th’n _who…”_

“You.”

Jason knows no more after he feels arms wrap around his torso and start dragging him. Where, he doesn’t know.

He just knows that _this _is why he didn’t want to sleep.


End file.
